Posts tagged ‘rant’

This came across my twitter feed earlier from a random stranger I follow:

“Oh, lord, this made me laugh. And wish that I was adopted.” It was in reference to a video the person’s brother had put on youtube, featuring him being a dork.

I was totally blindsided. Anything to do with adoption needs to be marked clearly and come with trigger warnings, seriously. Add to that, that has to be one of the most offensive, insensitive, privileged things to say. You wish you’d been adopted into the family you were born into? Really? Did you really just say that? I mean, I cut some slack to the people who grew up in abusive households and say they wish they’d been adopted. They have the natural, normal desire to have escaped being abused. The statement shows their clear lack of understanding of adoption, adopters, and adoptee issues, but they wanted to escape, and society has misled them into thinking adoption is perfect and wunnerful.

I do, however, have a bone to pick with the general public who say such stupid, insensitive things. Society might still be saying to them that ALL (natural) parents are TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, AWFUL people who abuse drugs and children and small animals, and ALL adopters are AMAZING, LOVING, SELFLESS saviours who never die, do drugs, lose jobs, and are in general perfect in every way. But. Really? I can see believing that until you’re like five or something. By the time you’re an adult, you should have the critical thinking capacity to realise nothing is ever that black and white.

Furthermore, even if it were true, then is it not sad that the adoptee had shitty parents that they had to be taken away from? Or does being taken in by AMAZING, LOVING, SELFLESS saviours make up for all of that? Wait. Not even make up for – but erase! As if born to! Tabula rasa! Gee, who wouldn’t want to be adopted? You’d get perfect parents who never make any mistakes whatsoever, nevermind become abusive in any way, and a happy, charming life with no troubles whatsoever.

Adoption is perfect in every way.

Oh, if only all us bitter, angry, ungrateful adoptees would just believe it and shut the fuck up, right? Then the “professionals” can go on making a fuck-ton of money, and the adopters can keep on purchasing the child(ren) of their choosing. If only they could erase the psychological research into adoption and only listen to that adoptoraptor/sociologist-whose-name-I-won’t-mention, if only they could more successfully brainwash adoptees so they never so much as even THINK about their natural families ever, if only they could shove every person who has lost a child to it, the most noble of institutions, back into a closet… Think how much more money they could make. Why, everyone would want to adopt, because it’s such a good thing! (You know, if they can’t have their own kids, of course. Or if they need one of a different ethnicity to complete their rainbow collection.)

As for this twitter comment, hir brother did something embarrassing, so ze “wishes” to have been adopted so ze could, presumably, say “I’m adopted, thus not related to that dorky person there!”. I can almost get that. I’m glad I’m not related to any of my adoptive family, mostly because I really like being related to my real family. But, adoption is so much more than “just” not being related to the people you live with. Do you also want:

a fake birth certificate? they can change date, time, and place of birth, as well as the standard falsifications like name and parents

to probably not have access to the original, factual documentation of your birth?

to grow up feeling – and actually being – an outsider because no one in your “family” looks, acts, or thinks like you?

to grow up feeling unwanted or like an alien? wondering why your own mother gave you away? what was so wrong with you? were you a bad baby?

to watch your family interact with each other, with them looking and being so much like each other, while you stand alone, apart, unable to see yourself reflected in any other being?

to have been ripped away from your mother at birth just so some infertile/selfish/greedy people could play family?

to have been bought and paid for like an object?

to only be grateful and never ever express any negative thoughts or feelings?

to be a perpetual child – to society at large and under the law?

to be at disproportionate risk for mental health and/or substance abuse problems?

If you really want to be adopted, be my guest. Let’s switch places.

Newsflash to the world: Adoption is traumatic. Only the survivors get to joke about it. Saying casual things like that is not on. It’s beyond the pale. If you’re not an adoptee or a natural parent, shut the fuck up about adoption, especially saying stupid shit like you wish you’d been adopted into the family you were born to. You know nothing. You’re just showing your ignorance and lack of ability to empathise. It’s not cute.

“Adoption Loss is the only trauma in the world where the victims are expected by the whole of society to be grateful.” – The Reverend Keith C. Griffith, MBE

“It is difficult to face the fact that by definition every adopted child is an abandoned child, who has suffered a devastating loss. No matter that the adoptive parents call it relinquishment and the birth mother calls it surrender, the child experiences it as abandonment. ” – Nancy Verrier

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This is a bit of a rant. There are far better critiques of Safe Haven out there. Like the one Fugitivus did here.

Safe Haven has good intentions but is a more than terrible idea. Anonymity should NEVER be promised or granted, because every child/eventual adult deserves to know who they come from and who their parents are. Now we’re going to have yet another generation of human beings who have no idea where they are from and will likely never know, even with DNA testing. Not only that, but it’s dangerous and negligent to leave them with zero medical history or contact with the other parent or relatives. If a baby is relinquished through Safe Haven, every option should be given to the mother to help her through whatever situation she is facing that is making her so desperate and to help her keep her baby. The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of mothers want their babies. Some just need help to enable them to be good parents. Barring mother/child preservation, relatives should be found and considered. Stranger placement should be an absolute last resort.

Besides that, how can you actually be certain it’s a parent dropping the child off? Another problem is that two people are involved in the creation of a child. Why is it that only one (if you are assuming it is indeed a parent dropping the kid off) is needed to get rid of it? No parent has the right to relinquish the parental rights of the other, possibly non-consenting, parent.

Safe Haven is nothing but a band-aid. It does nothing to address the actual causes of why people abandon or abuse people, and in its history it can already be proven that the people who dump their child in the river are not the same ones who will surrender to Safe Haven.

And as an aside: No parent is a “birth” anything. They are the child’s parents. They may be terrible ones, but that is who they are. If a child is brought up in substitute care, the kid may end up with one or two (or more) other parents, but that does not change the fact that the people responsible for the child’s conception and birth are, and will always be, his/her parents. To deny that bond and connection is to deny the child’s very existence and invalidates his/her origins and heritage.

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Dear American Parents (and some other individuals who are not parents but unfortunately work with kids):

If you think your kid is disrespectful, take a good, long, hard look in the goddamn mirror. Telling your kid to shut up or stop crying because ze “has no reason to cry”? Disrespectful (and harmful, but that’s another story). Bodily forcing hir to be somewhere ze doesn’t want to, especially after giving a “choice” to leave? Extremely disrespectful. Hitting at all, but especially when you want aggression to stop? Disrespectful and just plain illogical, not to mention abusive. I hope you still do it when your kid’s older so ze can charge you with assault, a charge you’ve deserved from the first moment you laid a hand on your child. The fact our society does not consider hitting kids to be assault (unless it’s “too much” hitting), unlike for ANY. OTHER. group (including animals)? Disrespectful (and hypocritical). Forcing your child to be somewhere ze does not want to be and punishing if ze were to express a desire to not be there? Disrespectful. Treating your kids like a nearly intolerable inconvenience? Disrespectful.

I could think of several more examples, but I’ll stop here.

On the whole, I am so thoroughly sick and disgusted with all of you (minus a few rare exceptions).

Maybe YOU should try doing as you say and not as you do. And grow the fuck up and act like an adult. Stop expecting your kid to be the grown up.